Double-cross.
Bad Bob and _his_ pals had been given the bank money to hold. Enraged over the deaths, they shoved it into Jap bank accounts, figured the two whiteys couldn’t glom it, that the swag would accumulate interest until the internment was adios. Bob stashed the bankbooks at his crib and was soon to send the white boy fronting the getaway pad over to get them–but he got word a friend of his got greedy.
The friend’s name was George Hayakawa, a vice-warlord in the Rising Sons. He went to Walt Koenig with a deal: He’d get the cash for a fifty-fifty cut. Koenig said no dealsky, tortured the location of the bankbooks and the address of the hideout out of Hayakawa, snuffed him, chopped off his dick, and sent it over in a pizza delivery box. A warning–don’t fuck with the White Peril.
I pressed Murikami on Maggie Cordova–how did she fit in? The epic took on perv-o overtones.
Maggie was Bad Bob’s sister’s squeeze–the femme half of a dyke duo. She was the co-finger woman inside the bank; when Mrs. Lena Sakimoto got shot to sukiyaki, Maggie fled to Tijuana, fearing similar reprisals. Bob didn’t know exactly where she was. I pressed, threatened, and damn near shot Murikami to get the answer I wanted most: where Maggie Cordova got “Prison of Love.”
Bad Bob didn’t know; I _had_ to know. I made him a deal I knew I’d double-cross the second Lorna slinked into view. You come with me, we’ll withdraw all the gelt, you take me to T.J. to find Maggie and the money’s all yours. Murikami agreed; we sealed the bargain by toking a big bottle of laudanum laced with sake. I passed out on my cot with my gun in my hand and segued straight into the arms of Lorna.
* * *
It was a great hop dream.
Lorna was performing nude at the Hollywood Palladium, backed by an all-jigaboo orchestra–gigantic darkies in rhinestone-braided Uncle Sam outfits. She humped the air; she sprayed sweat; she sucked the microphone head. Roosevelt, Hitler, Stalin, and Hirohito were carried in on litters; they swooned at her feet as Lor belted “Someone to Watch Over Me.” A war broke out on the bandstand: crazed jigs beating each other with trombone slides and clarinet shafts. It was obviously a diversion–Hitler jumped on stage and tried to carry Lorna over to a Nazi U-boat parked in the first row. I foiled Der Führer, picking him up by the mustache and hurling him out to Sunset Boulevard. Lorna was swooning into my arms when I felt a tugging and opened my eyes to see Bob Murikami standing over me, saying, “Rise and shine, shamus. We got banking to do.”
* * *
We carried it out straight-faced, with appropriate props–handcuffs on Bad Bob, phony paperwork, a cereal box badge pinned to my lapel. Murikami impersonated over a dozen fellow Japs; we liquidated fourteen bank accounts to the tune of $81,000. I explained that I was Alien Squad brass, overseeing the confiscation of treasonous lucre; patriotic bank managers bought the story whole. At four we were heading south to T.J. and what might be my long-overdue reunion with the woman who’d scorched my soul long, long ago. Murikami and I talked easily, a temporary accord in Japanese-American relations–thanks to a healthy injection of long green.
“Why are you so interested in Maggie, Hearns?”
I took my eyes off the road–high cliffs dropping down to snow-white beaches packed with sunbathers on my right, tourist courts and greasy spoons on the left. Baby Tojo was smiling. I hoped I didn’t have to kill him. “She’s a conduit, kid. A pipeline to _the_ woman.”
“_The_ woman?”
“Right. The one I wasn’t ready for a while back. The one I would have flushed it all down the toilet for.”
“You think it will be different now?”
Eighty-one grand seed money; a wiser, more contemplative Hearns. Maybe I’d even dye a little gray in my hair. “Right. Once I clear up a little legal trouble I’m in, I’m going to suggest a long vacation in Acapulco, maybe a trip to Rio. She’ll see the difference in me. She’ll know.”